


And I'll Fight For Every Other Thing That's Left

by Birdegg



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Astrid Hofferson-centric, Astrid learns to make friends, Gen, Hiccup dies for real, Hiccup is dead, I killed him off screen because I am god of this world, Major character death - Freeform, Past Character Death, RIP, by almost being mauled to death, he's not in this fic except for as a memory, so she's doing great
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdegg/pseuds/Birdegg
Summary: There isn’t really a moment where she suddenly notices him. He’d been in the peripheral of her social life for longer than she could recall, but there’d been little concern to be had over him. He was Stoic’s son, a fact that gathered him the only awareness she had of him. Stoic the Vast’s child, an utter failure.When he’s killed, it’s as if something constant has been taken away from her. Hiccup had been the butt of jokes, but he had been young and inoffensive. The village watches Stoic collapse under the weight of a thousand unsaid words, watches as he realizes nothing had been worth it, that he was alone. Stoic the vast kneels at his son’s grave, and Astrid can’t help but feel a pain in her chest when she sees how little the lump of dirt is beneath their chiefs shadow.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 25





	1. Can't lose what you don't have

**Author's Note:**

> I am...very sorry. I love Hiccup, but I wanted to see what it would look like to have Astrid be the one to befriend dragons. She's not really the friendly type, so I wanted to explore the situation fully. Expect some toothless Astrid bonding, in the far future ha ha ha.

There isn’t really a moment where she suddenly notices him. He’d been in the peripheral of her social life for longer than she could recall, but there’d been little concern to be had over him. He was Stoic’s son, a fact that gathered him the only awareness she had of him. Stoic the Vast’s child, an utter failure. He couldn’t lift an axe to save his life, and soon enough it would come to that. A Viking didn’t live so long without grit.

Really though, she cared very little about their Chief’s awkward kid. She had her own business to attend to after all. While the four other heirs to the great families went off to drink or cause mischief, Astrid trained for stamina and strength. While the common children learned their own trade, had crushes, played and misbehaved, Astrid practiced her aim with knives and a light weight axe. She had no time to bully some scrawny boy; if she did a good enough job at defending the village, weaklings like him wouldn’t have to fight. Astrid had always possessed a good head for numbers; it was common sense that their village needed more workers and fewer fighters in order to sustain its bartering system. But with dragon raids frequently disrupting the flow of things, children were being trained younger and younger. Those who washed out were worthy of some contempt, but she’d prefer to live in a berk that could have a boy like hiccup living semi-comfortably, writing down history and training the children in edible plants.

When he’s killed, it’s as if something constant has been taken away from her. Hiccup had been the butt of jokes, but he had been young and inoffensive. The village watches Stoic collapse under the weight of a thousand unsaid words, watches as he realizes nothing had been worth it, that he was alone. Stoic the vast kneels at his son’s grave, and Astrid can’t help but feel a pain in her chest when she sees how little the lump of dirt is beneath their chiefs shadow. He hadn’t been anything, and now he never would be.

It’s not the first death she’s been around. She’s even lost siblings, mostly to sickness, but often to dragons. But there is something very ominous about this one, and the way they said Hiccup went into the forest alive and was found dead with very few marks. It almost appeared as if he had fallen and bumped his head on a rock. Astrid doubts even a screw-up like Hiccup had such poor reflexes. Her father gruffly shakes his head at the dinner table. Viking’s die in stupid ways all the time. specially weak one’s. It’s why the Hofferson’s don’t produce failures. Which she can’t argue with, even as the insinuation places a cold rock between the underside of her skin and her spine.

Still. There’s something wrong with it. She remembers him shooting some sort of contraption in the sky vaguely on the day of the last raid, but that’s it. She stands at the edge of the woods, and watches the way the shadows twist in the light and branches.

She wanders in without any clear goal, except for pointless questions. The why’s and how’s of things don’t matter, though sometimes she feels the urge to ask them anyway. A life of a Viking is simple, or so she is told, and a Viking listens to their betters when they tell them fact.

She wonders if Hiccup asked the wrong Why’s.

She’s a ways into the forest and with no more idea of what she expected to find when she started before she hears an odd slithering noise. She immediately thinks dragon and crouches low to the ground, moving forward on careful feet. She’s almost completely silent, and completely on guard. Something about all of this has been wrong from the beginning, and she doesn’t even know why she thinks that.

In front of her, low in the valley beneath her spot, is a Nightfury. It’s so dark, she feels as if the world was pinched between two corners and cut into a dragon shape. It’s an almost believable illusion, until its eyes open. Like two twin stars in the sky, they flicker as if lit by fire, and stamp their impression into her soul. For a moment, she cannot breathe, she cannot move. Death personified is here, and she has searched for it like a Viking searches for it with their last breath.

Then she is moving, flinging her battle axe into its shape. She creature screams, shifting out of the way for a moment before righting itself, unharmed. She curses, figuring it will fly away, or perhaps fly to her and eat her-but. But it does nothing.

It hisses and fires hot purple fire near her, but it does not charge. There is something so odd to this behaviour, which she risks sticking her head out from behind the rock she’s hidden in.

It’s tail.

It’s the arrow machine Hiccup made-tucked away-

The barrel-

That night, the direction-

_“Okay, but I hit a Nightfury”_

Oh. How ironic, that no one had believed him the one time he had succeeded in all his life. He must have gone after it, gotten himself killed in the skirmish. She narrows her eyes at the demon and promises to survive. She knows this news will not heal her broken chief, but it will give Hiccup’s spirit some peace, to know that his last deed was recognized.

A flightless dragon is a dead dragon. She slides out her dagger, the broader one made from Gronkle tooth. She will kill this beast, this creature who has plagued their village since before she was born.

She slides down the incline, running at the creature with a shriek. Dragons generally do not love loud noises made so close to them; the Nightfury rises on its front legs, making that long keening noise in its throat that means it’s preparing to fire at her. She viciously flings her dagger into its exposed stomach, relishing its pained cry before rolling in a tight ball toward it. The heat of its fire is felt despite her dodge, and she slips her finger into her knife belt before she’s even done rising from her roll. She has to kill this thing, the quicker, the better.

She’s about to stab it in the heart when another shriek calls behind her, and she’s blown off her feet by a new enemy.

Her body hits the dirt with a hard thud, the impact jostling her knife from her hand. She rises as quickly as possible, head spinning from the blunt force of her landing, and she faces her newer adversary with dread. Another Nightfury, except this one is pale like the moon, with blue eyes that shine with anger. It jumps onto her before she has time to recover, claws slicing her legs open. She cries out in pain, jamming her fingers into its eyes. It bellows and staggers its head away from her trapped form, and she manages to wiggle her way from beneath it, crawling to a tangle of rocks nearby. She crams herself into the smallest crevice possible, and almost falls flat on her face with surprise when the little hole she’s in extends deeper than she expects. Clearly she’s hiding out in an old animal den, and she would take more time to marvel at her luck if there weren’t bloodthirsty demons screaming and spitting at her from behind the large rocks she’s trapped herself in. The Lightfury (She’s giving it a name) especially seems fired up, spewing purple shots at the boulders that keep them from each other. She can hear the Nightfury whimper in pain, probably from its most recent wound and feels a little thrill at that.

The thrill lasts for a very short amount of time when her passion and fear drain away and she remembers that her legs are shredded, bleeding and unable to take her away from this fun little situation she’s trapped herself in.

“Great.” She mumbles to herself, not wanting to gain the attention of her foes. She gathers up as much moss as she can with her limited mobility and presses them against her wounds. She grits her teeth in agony as the rough texture of the plants scratches against her flesh, but only presses down harder. She’d rather deal with this hurt than die of blood loss.

As the afternoon drags its way into dusk, she considers the merits of letting herself die. It’s not a Viking’s way to give up, nor is it hers personally, but the situation is looking a bit dire. She’s been critically wounded, she’s surrounded by two of the most dangerous dragons in existence, who she’s seriously pissed off, and she’s trapped herself and has only one exit-to the jaws of her enemies.

She lays her head down against the stone and curses herself for being such a try hard. Why couldn’t she let the chief’s son’s death go as some expected tragedy?


	2. Not Toothless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid's making friends the old fashioned way, near death experiences!

She manages to fall asleep sometime in the afternoon, and wakes to pitch darkness. It’s a full moon, so she can see faint etches of silver beyond the doors of her crevice, and her eyes catch on the light like fishing hooks to skin. Astrid realizes that she’s cold, somewhat belatedly. She’s shivering, and her breath is coming out in puffs of foggy smoke. She knows it could be worse, that her fingers and toes could stop feeling anything instead of hurting, that she could lose them.

She curls into a tight ball, groaning as she moves her leg. The moss is stuck onto her ruined pants, pasted together with blood which looks more black than red in the low light. If she doesn’t want to lose that foot she needs to keep it warm, but she also has to make sure she doesn’t irritate it enough to start the bleeding again.

In response to her groan, she can hear shuffling outside. Her breath catches, eyes flickering to the opening of the tiny cave she’s hidden in. She can’t see anything more than moss and dirt in the moonlight, but she knows that Death is waiting there for her, in the form of two furious dragons.

Hiccup had gone missing for two weeks before they found his body. She wonders if this had been his last days of living, hidden beneath cover and shivering in the cold. Astrid tries to imagine her own parent’s reaction to her death, and can’t come up with anything more than shame. If she died before she’d even gotten to make a name for herself, they’d never forgive her.

She lowers her head to the ground, listening closely. She can hear steps against the rocks above her, almost silent except for a whisper of sound. She lets out a low breath and relaxes her stiff muscles as much as possible. She’s curled in a ball like a cat, pressed into the side of the burrow for warmth. She tries to keep herself awake, thoughts buzzing around her head like flies to a corpse. But soon it’s all she can do to keep her eyes open, and she falls into a deeper darkness.

\---

Morning comes reluctantly for Astrid. She’s still in the damn crawl space, and her limps are sore from being cramped for so long. Her mouth is dry and her lips crack when she parts them, and she knows this means she’s becoming dehydrated.

When her elder sister had died when she was twelve, she’d trained so hard and consistently that she’d become dehydrated in two days. Her parents had to send her to the healer, who seemed mad at them for some reason. She had no idea why, Asdtrid had been the one to overdo it. That wasn’t her parents fault.

The feeling is similar now. She wants a drink badly, and suspects her leg could do for a wash. Astrid doesn’t want to know what it looks like right now, covered in dirty moss and untreated. If there was only one Nightfury she’d feel more comfortable trying to sneak outside, but as it is one could leave and the other could stay. She might be considered difficult prey for a wild animal, which might move on to easier targets, but dragons sometimes acted on spite the same way humans did. It was possible the Devils wanted revenge.

She grits her teeth and stares vengefully at the morning light.

“Gods-damned Hiccup Haddock.” She swears for no reason at all, hands curled like claws into the dirt. Like a banshee call, her words ignite loud movement outside. She flinches back from the entrance as low groaning noises echo across the valley. She can see flashes of black scales outside and clumps of dirt being kicked up, all while the sound continues the creaking and crashing of an old ship in rough water. Her heart beats louder than the entire calamity, smashing against her ribcage like it’s trying to escape.

An eye appears in the opening, surrounded by blackness. Astrid resists yelping, the green-yellow brightness cutting against the darkness of her cave. Its pupil widens as it catches her in the gloom, locking onto her shape. It makes a low sound, sad and deep in its throat. They stay like that for moments, completely still, before it retracts. She thinks it’s left for a moment, before it throws something to the ground before her.

She recognizes it immediately, torn as it is. A dark brown leather cover, with loose sheets of paper sticking out from its worn pages. She’s seen it in her peripherals countless times.

Hiccups journal.

She snatches it from the opening without thinking. Astrid doesn’t even consider the snap of a dragons teeth near her arm, or that the journal is likely bait. She’s even rewarded for her foolishness, as the Nightfury allows her to take it without movement. She pushes open the cover, wincing at the saliva on the cover.

It’s a strange thing, to see a dead boys drawings. She’ll never talk to Hiccup again, not that she did much before, but she gets this strange glimpse of him. Astrid Hofferson never wept for Hiccup, and barely felt more than a low sadness at his death, like a bruise that had been pressed on. Still, she feels a little closer to him, finally getting a look at what he had been scribbling in the old book.

Machine parts mostly. Ideas for complicated contraptions she could only guess at the use for. Sometimes the occasional drawing of nature, tree needles or light against roots.

His father, Stoic, looking worn and half asleep beside a hearth. It’s a side of her chief that she’s only seen since his son died. The lines of charcoal deepen in the creases of his eyes, in the shadow beside his mouth. He looks old. She grimaces and flips to the next page.

A picture of her.

She’s so surprised she almost puts the book down. She’s laughing at her younger sister, Dagny, as she hefts a shield too large to her. It’s a simple sketch, and it looks like it was made on the fly.

Astrid flips the page and ignores the feelings that come with seeing her own image rendered by a boy long dead.

The eyes of the Nightfury stare back at her. She stares into its eyes, light against the dark of the charcoal that makes up its body. The dragon is depicted crouched on rocks, something hesitant in its posture. Below the picture Hiccup has written:

_It looked too much like me. I couldn’t._

“Morgana’s blood.” She swears under her breath, running through the rest of the pages rapidly. Diagrams of the Nightfury, the creature playing with a fish, sleeping, _eating with Hiccup._

She slams the book closed, breathing hard. Before she can stop herself from the foolish attempt to communicate she gasps out.

“You _knew_ Hiccup?” Her voice is rough from lack of water, and tense. The creature seems to reply, chirping almost excitedly outside the den. She can see its feet as it twirls in the daylight outside. Astrid thinks of the picture of Hiccup feeding the dragon a cod as it smiles at him in excitement. It didn’t just know Hiccup. It _liked_ Hiccup.

She didn’t even know dragons were capable of that.

It had given her the notebook when she said his name. It knew him, it liked him. Was it trying to communicate with her? It seemed much friendlier since she had mentioned him.

She mentally prepares herself to do something dumb and unplanned. It’s against her nature; Astrid Hofferson isn’t afraid to take risks, but she’s never been foolish. Until recently, when she went out into the forest alone on a hunch, and faced two Fury’s down. She lets out a deep sigh, and begins crawling forward.

The clean smell of the valley hits her first after being cooped up with her own scents of blood and sweat. It’s a beautiful day, and she can hear birds singing and a brook burbling nearby. Light soothes her clammy skin, and grass tickles her fingers as she pulls herself out of her hiding place.

At first, she thinks she’s crazy, that she imagined that the Nightfury had been nearby. It seemed a bit too soon to have dehydration hallucinations but, it was more possible than a dragon trying to talk with her. She keeps up this illusion until she hears a huff behind her, and cranes her head to see bright lemon eyes watching her.

The Nightfury seems almost neutral, if a little impatient. It’s perched on the rocks that made her sleeping place, tale flipping back at forth as it tracks her movement on the ground. She tries to get to her feet and stumbles as the pain of her wound flares to life. It pulses up her leg like magma, and she stifles a cry grimly. Standing seems like a last resort for now, and she reluctantly sits in front of a dragon that’s killed more Vikings than she’s even met.

They sit in silence for a moment, and the world slows down. Astrid breaths when it breathes, barely aware of herself. Its nostrils flare as it smells the air, claws flecking.

“You’re different than I thought you’d be.” She mumbles, surprised at her own decision to speak. The Nightfury cocks its head.

Then it smiles with all its teeth.


	3. For The People I Give My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time, sorry folks.

She ends up calling it Fangs. It’s a stupid name, and it makes it sound like she’s talking about a dog and not a giant Demon. The concept of naming a dragon seems like a betrayal in itself, but Astrids too tired to call it Night Fury over and over again. Fangs isn’t friendly with her exactly, but it isn’t aggressive either. Fangs circles around her prone form repeatedly, holding one of its paws to its stomach where she stabbed it. Astrid’s not in any mood to go sympathizing to her supposed mortal enemy, but she understands the urge. She wants to cover her foot up, the glaring weakness that it is.

Never before has she been so aware of the size differences between Vikings and dragons. When she goes back for the journal, Fangs follows her closely, hulking body a dark shadow over her body. She can hear it breathing, lungs the size of her torso expanding and deflating in the morning air. She clutches Hiccups journal nervously to her chest, but the beast only narrows its eyes and moves on.

She has no idea where the Lightfury went, and isn’t excited to find out. She drags herself behind Fangs, sweating with pain and effort. It takes seven minutes to cross the clearing, by the end of which she’s shaking a little. The claws of the Light Fury had been thin for a dragon, but needle sharp. She doesn’t understand why it hurts so much, or why she can’t even limp on that leg. Something is amiss, something obvious, but she can’t figure it out right now.

By the time they make it to the rocks that lead up the small valley, Fangs is making impatient huffing sounds at her. Astrid grits her teeth.

“If you want me to move faster, don’t sick your white buddy on me.” She growls, glaring daggers into Fangs scaly skin. She then abruptly realizes she’s talking to a dragon and lets her head droop to the ground. She’s going crazy.

The rocks are a different type of hell. She relies entirely on arm muscles to heft herself up each bolder, which normally isn’t a problem considering her training. But her wound is infected maybe, because she’s dizzy and groaning half-way up, heart beating rapidly. Her fingers tremble against the edge of the next rock, and she almost screams as the sharp edges of the stones scrape across her cuts.

Fangs sits at the top of the hill, watching her. He’s stopped making those low warbling noises a while ago, and is now dead silent.

She passes out briefly, at the top. The Night fury wakes her by literally spitting on her, disgustingly thick saliva on her already ragged braids. She doesn’t have enough coherency to stop herself from swearing at it.

Astrid stops moving, staring into the deep blue sky. The clouds are few today, and occasionally a cool breeze hits her face. She’s so unbearably hot that it feels like a God-send, small relief that it is. The creature reaches its long face out to prod her head, and she lets out an undignified yelp. She can count its individual scales, and Astrid’s never been this close to a dragon. It blots out the sky, leaving her in darkness and under the watch of two yellow-green suns. Fangs blinks. She blinks back. Whatever she’s expecting it to do; it isn’t grabbing her by her shirt.

Astrid growls in shock and anger as Fangs lifts her off the ground by her scruff, flinging her roughly onto its back. She cries out in pain as her wound is jostled so roughly, blood pumping through her like war drums. She’s _on the back of a dragon_. Surely no Viking, no person alive, has touched a dragon this way and lived.

No person alive, but maybe Hiccup. Shock courses through her exhausted body. Is this why it chose to do this, easily and without concern? Had Hiccup _ridden_ a dragon?

Astrid clutches madly onto its neck as the beast starts moving. Its gate is smooth, like a cat or like a fish in water. The world moves by her eyes more gracefully than it ever has before.

They leap over logs, sliding through underbrush like liquid. Despite Fangs size, he dodges every tree and ridge, flying with his feet on the ground. She can’t help the amazement that bubbles up in her, try as she might. She feels as a small, stupid child again, climbing a tree and being surprised at how big the world is. The feelings swirl through her until she can’t help but laugh, eyes wide and hair whipping in the wind. Fangs glances back her way, and she swears his mouth looks like a cat’s grin.

Astrid’s so caught up in the experience, that she is struck with surprise when she sees Berk approaching. The colour of its roofs through the trees, flash against her retinas.

 _“Stop.”_ She hisses, before she can stop herself. Astrid Hofferson is an enemy of dragons, but she’s not so honourless that she’ll doom one that’s saved her and brought her to her home.

Fangs jumps to an old spruce tree, balancing uneasily on one of its lower branches. It makes that strange rumbling sound, the one that resembles the cadence of a question.

“You can’t go into the Village, they’ll kill you.” She snarls, surprised at her vehemence.

Fangs snorts and rolls his shoulders, causing Astrid to scramble for a hold on his smooth hide.

“That’s not an argument ass-” She was arguing with a dragon. Astrid lets out a sigh, as slowly as possible, bitten nails digging into impenetrable black scales.

If Fangs drops her off to the Village, everyone is going to want to know what hurt her, and why it was so close to Berk. She’s going to have to tell the truth, because she’s Berks first before anything else, before everything else. She’d sacrifice this dragon for them if they asked.

She’d sacrifice herself if they asked.

So. She can’t let them ask.

Fishlegs has always had a supply of medical herbs. She overheard him complaining to the twins, wishing that his younger siblings wouldn't mess with his stores of dried flowers for their games. She hadn’t cared about anything he was saying at the time, too busy trying to study with Snotlout squabbling in her ear, but she’s glad she remembers this now. If she can get into his house, steal his herbs, and retreat with the Nightfury to plan her next move, then…

Then? She shakes her head, trying to flick the wooziness from her brain like a bull with flies. She decides on the plan, because she honestly can’t think of a better idea in her current state.

Astrid eyes Fangs. How she’s going to communicate this to a giant lizard is beyond her.

“Fangs…we need to steal things to heal me.” The Nightfury’s head tilts, but it doesn’t make any other attempts at moving. She’s going to take that as a lack of understanding.

“Shit.” She grumbles, massaging her forehead. “Okay. Do you know Fishlegs?” Astrid asks desperately, not expecting for the dragon to perk up, barking lowly. She huffs against it, closing her eyes briefly. Did hiccup show his dragon friends his human friends?

No. She couldn’t call them his friends. They had mocked him, especially after his failures and poor attempt to become a Viking. Hiccup had always been scorned, and she hadn’t felt anything other than that for him either.

Astrid refused to regret her actions, refused to mourn some boy she barely knew. But the image of him showing this creature the other kids in his age group, sitting on some tree from afar, was depressing.

“Fishlegs.” She mumbles blearily. “Go to Fishlegs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid isn't feeling great. But look, she's made a friend! Kind of...


End file.
